PROCEEDINGS 



MASSACHUSETTS flISTOEIGAL SOCIETY 

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 

TERCENTENARY OF THE BIRTH 
OF JOHN MILTON 

9 December 1908 



PROCEEDINGS 



MASSACHUSETTS HISTOEICAL SOCIETY 

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 

TERCENTElSrARY OF THE BIRTH 
OF JOHN MILTON 

9 December 1908 



That Majesty which through this work doth reign 
Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane ; 
And things divine thou treatst of in such state 
As them preserves and thee, inviolate. 

Andrew Mart ell 

Verses prefixed to Paradise Lost, 2d Ed., 1674 



CAMBRIDGE 
JOHN WILSON AND SON 

Sanitersttg ^jJrcss 
1909 



X 









MILTOX TEllCENTENARY, 

160f-1909. 

In place of the stated monthly meeting of the Society, a 
public commemoration, under its auspices, of the tercentenary 
of the birth of John Milton was held at the edifice of the 
First Church in Boston, on Berkeley Street, on Wednesday 
afternoon, December 9, at four o'clock. Seats in the chancel 
were occupied by the President, Dr. Everett, Dr. DeNorman- 
die. Dr. Perry, and Rev. Charles E. Park. A portrait of Mil- 
ton, made for the occasion, bearing a garland of laurel, stood 
on an easel at the back of the chancel. 

Members of the Society and of their families, and invited 
friends, were admitted on presentation of tickets at half-past 
three o'clock ; and the doors were thrown open to the public 
at five minutes of four. More than eight hundred persons in 
all participated, filling the pews and much of the standing- 
room at the entrance. 

An elaborate programme of the exercises had been pre- 
pared, in the nature of a memorial of the occasion, fifteen 
hundred copies of which were printed for distribution among 
those in attendance and otherwise. It contained reproductions 
of two of the engraved portraits of Milton, after Faithorne 
and one at Nuneham, as well as reproductions of the title- 
page of the first collective edition of his minor "Poems" 
(1645) showing the rare portrait by Marshall of the first 
titlepage of the first edition of the " Paradise Lost " (1667), 
and of the titlepage of the first edition of the " Paradise 
Regained " (1671) ; also the sonnets, the extracts from 
Milton's " Areopagitica," and the hymns, selected as features 
of the observance. 

The first number of the " Order of Exercises" was an organ 
prelude, the "Largo" by Handel from his opera of Xerxes, 
by Mr. Arthur Foote, organist and musical director of the 
celebration. This was followed by the " Venite," rendered by a 
triple quartette, a chant by Henry Lawes, the friend of Milton, 
to whom one of Milton's sonnets is addressed, and who was 
the composer of the music for "Comus" and "Arcades." 



4 MASSACHUSETTS HISTOEICAL SOCIETY. 

After the invocation by Dr. DeNorraandie, a chorus from 
'• The Nativity," composed by John Knowles Paine, was sung 
with the words from Milton's hymn, " On the Morning of 
Christ's Nativity." 

Dr. Perry read selections from the autobiographical sonnets 
of Milton, the seventh, nineteenth, and twenty-second, and 
from the " Areopagitica," closing with Wordsworth's sonnet 
on Milton. The choir then sang Milton's paraphrase of Psalm 
LXXXIV. to the tune of "York," composed by Milton's 
father. 

The President's introduction was as follows : 

Himself a typical English Puritan in thought and life, John 
Milton was both a Puritan poet and the poet of the Puritans, 
— acknowledged Laureate, his supremacy there was, and is, 
none to dispute. In its inception, and through the lives of 
six generations of its people, Massachusetts was the Puritan 
Commonwealth far excellence ; to be such, and to be held 
such, was at once its pride and its doom. Ours is the time- 
honored Historical Society of the Commonwealth, its act of 
incorporation bearing the sign-manual of Samuel Adams, the 
Puritan of the Puritans, then Acting-Governor. It is there- 
fore manifestly proper and altogether fitting that this Soci- 
ety should make special observance of the tercentenary of 
the birth of him who supremely represents the Puritan on 
those Parnassian heights where the Puritan would least be 
looked for, and indeed where he was least at home. I there- 
fore, in behalf of the Society, welcome you who have joined 
lis here in this our observance of a very memorable event. 

And in doing so I would first call your attention to the form 
this observance has taken, as set forth in the programme of the 
occasion. When those upon whom devolved the character 
and arrangement of the day's procedure addressed themselves 
to their task, two methods of observance at once suggested 
themselves, — the staging and performance of one or the 
other of Milton's dramas — the "Samson Agonistes" and the 
"Comus," — or a series of appreciations of Milton in the va- 
rious phases of his somewhat Protean character, as a poet, as 
a publicist, as a historian, as a controversialist, as a scholar, 
or as a teacher. After full discussion both methods were re- 
jected. For this Society to attempt the staging of a drama, 



MILTON TERCENTENARY. 6 

even the " Connis," was manifestly incongruous ; even more so 
for it to essay the " Agonistes " ; and Harvard, to which it would 
have been more, and to us, as it seemed, especially appropriate 
so to do, lent an ear both dull and cold to the suggestion. On 
the other hand, a programme of suitable appreciations was 
difficult to arrange, and — a little conventional withal — 
seemed somewhat commonplace. Finally it was concluded 
that, apart from and beyond a single utterance, John Milton 
alone was competent to say the final word on Milton ; he only 
could lift us to the full height of the occasion. On this basis 
to-day's programme has been prepared. We shall listen to the 
words of one orator only; and whether in music or in utter- 
ance, for the rest go direct to the fountain head. In sonnet 
and in chant Milton shall voice Milton. To use the expres- 
sion of Walter Scott, no awkward squad fires its volley here 
and to-day over either the cradle or the grave of our laureate. 

Needless to say, the rule assigns a limit to me. I must 
therefore be very brief. That we of Massachusetts should 
celebrate the tercentenary of Milton's birth is, as I have 
already said, proper and fitting ; but that we should do so 
as the Massachusetts Historical Society and in this especial 
edifice has a significance which it is my present privilege 
as well as function to emphasize. Among the original thir- 
teen of our American communities, Pennsylvania, Virginia 
and Massachusetts alone designated themselves not States 
but Commonwealths; and the designation has a deep his- 
torical significance. If not the oldest child, Massachusetts 
was the unmistakable offspring of that great English Com- 
monwealth over which Cromwell ruled, and of which Milton 
was the poet and tiie mouth[)iece, — blood of her blood, bone 
of her bone, — most of all, slie, in quaint and homelike 
phrase, favored her mother. In the group of names asso- 
ciated with that memorable time, three belong especially to 
Massachusetts; they are of the blood, — John Hampden, 
Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, — the great Puritan trium- 
virate. And this in which we are to-day gathered is the 
present house of worship of the First Church in Boston — 
the church of John Winthrop and John Cotton, and of young 
Sir Harry Vane. The last is our connecting link. Three of 



6 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

Milton's great autobiographical sonnets are reproduced in full 
in the programme prepared for this occasion. You have 
listened to them. They are those designated as the seventh, 
the nineteenth and the twenty-second. Almost immediately 
preceding the second is that other addressed to him who 
Avas once a resident of Boston and Governor of the infant 
Colony. It begins with the familiar lines, 

Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, 
Than whom a better senator ne'er held 
The helm of Rome, 

and immediately before this is that other sonorous chant, 
beginning 

Cromwell, our chief of men, 

in which occurs that famous and familiar phrase. 

Peace hath her victories 
No less renown'd tlian War. 

These, Cromwell and Milton, are two of the three great 
worthies of the English Commonwealth ; the third, Hampden, 
is the only one of the trio whose name we here in Massachu- 
setts have locally appropriated as a household word. And 
Vane is the connecting link between them and us, A com- 
municant of the church which now worships in this edifice, 
Sir Harry Vane associates John Winthrop and John Cotton 
with Hampden and Cromwell and Milton. The memorials in 
bronze and in marble of the two former keep watch and ward 
at the entrance to this edifice or against its northern wall ; the 
name of John Hampden stands out in the roll of our counties; 
and John Milton has embalmed in immortal verse the mem- 
ory of Vane, Thus, truly, we find ourselves here and now in 
august company, — in company with him whom Clarendon re- 
ferred to as the Pater Patrice of his day ; with him whom 
men know as the Great Protector; with him the erstwhile 
Governor of Massachusetts, and the typical martyr of the 
Restoration ; with him the Father of Massachusetts ; and with 
that other "The unmitred Pope of a Pope-hating Common 
wealth " ; and all gather here with us in spirit, — grouped 
around the cradle of one who, moving to the music of the 



MILTON TERCENTENARY. I 

spheres in the remote and splendid orb of Homer, Virgil and 
Dante, sang in immortal verse. 

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, 

until, like the " blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," 

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: 
The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
■\Vhere angels tremble while they gaze, 
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, 
Closed his eyes in endless night. 

In conformity with the usage of the Society, I now, with all 
confidence while so doing, call upon our associate Dr. Everett 
for a fitting appreciation of hira whose tercentennial natal 
day we are thus met to commemorate. 

Dr. Everett spoke as follows : 

The name of Milton opens such a vast field for interesting 
discussion, that a speaker for an hour must confine himself to 
some one phase of its varied extent; and I think Mr. Adams 
has shown us the most appropriate topic for our attention here 
and now, when he calls on us to consider 

Milton the Puritan. 

One of the last gleams of Sir Walter Scott's genius, before 
the clouds closed over it, is the scene in " Woodstock " where 
the Cavalier challenges the Roundhead to produce from among 
the Puritans any flash of the poetical and dramatic genius 
which Charles I. and his followers found in Shakespeare. The 
young Parliamentary colonel heeds the call, and repeats a 
passage of transcendent beauty from " Connis." Tlie poetry 
sinks with heavenly cadence into the ears and soul of the 
aged knight; he gives way to a hearty burst of applause, and 
inquires about the autlior. The disguised king to whom he 
ap[)eals tells him that it is John Milton. The name arouses 
the most violent revulsion of feeling, and he indulges in a con- 
trary burst of wrath at being tricked into expressing approval 
of anything written by the author of the Defence of the People 
of Enuland, the secretary of Oliver Cromwell. 

Sir Walter could draw a scene bringing out the conflicting 



8 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

passions and prejudices of men with a spirit and truth which 
no other could command. But this dialogue about Milton is 
exceptionally spirited and truthful as reflecting passions and 
prejudices which have raged through both Old and New Eng- 
land for over two centuries and have not yet lost their force. 
Those who accepted the name of Puritans, and lived up 
to it, have been taunted from Milton's day to this with au 
enmity to all the grace and beauty of humanity, with being un- 
couth and repulsive ; deriving these painful qualities from the 
verj^ nature of their profession, in its essence inconsistent with 
the beauty and tenderness and poetry of life. No end of what 
passes for wit has been expended on the Bible names, the 
sombre dress, the unadorned shrines, the tuneless psalms, and 
in general the unlovely and dreary nature of the Puritans. 

To all such criticisms, whether in joke or in earnest, the life 
and works of Milton are an answer. He was a Puritan of the 
Puritans, engaged in war to the knife with the system of 
Charles and Laud in Church and State. Yet from the version 
of the Psalms which he attempted in his boyhood to " Paradise 
Regained" and "Samson Agoniates," the work of his ad- 
vanced age, there breathes in every page of his verse the 
aroma of the loftiest and sweetest poetry. A control of metre, 
rhymed or unrhymed, unsurpassed by Virgil or Spenser, — a 
justice of simile, an elegance of fancy, a vividness of imagina- 
tion that Lucretius or Dante might envy, — an alternate terse- 
ness and exuberance of phrase that reminds us now of 
Petrarch and anon of Ariosto, — a chastened command of 
classical and romantic allusion beside which the style of Sid- 
ney or Ben Jonson is rank pedantry, — all these things chal- 
lenge rivalry with the greatest names of past times, and give 
him unquestioned right to the poet's bay. 

No contemporary, however bigoted, and none of their Tory 
successors could resist the charm of such poems, or fail to rec- 
ognize tlieir author's pre-eminence. Hence, as may be seen in 
Johnson's biography, tlieir attack on Puritanism and Milton as 
a Puritan had to be diverted from stale jokes to equally 
stale charges of perversive politics and hypocritical mor- 
als, great stress being laid on Milton's unseemly violence of 
argument. 

I suppose Milton's poetry to be comparatively out of favor 
now, though the awe that attends his name makes men shy 



MILTON TERCENTENAKY. 9 

of criticism ; but as it is at once thoroughly musical and 
thoroughly intelligible, it naturally does not appeal to an age 
which craves, for what it calls poetry, verse without melody 
and sentences without sense, and warmly praises " Lycidas," 
that one of all Milton's poems that really needs an interpreter. 
In the same way Puritan principles are the constant subject 
of sneers as at once disagreeable and impracticable, in an age 
that thinks the only object of life is to do what you want to, 
— if you know what that is. 

I believe myself that the grandeur and beauty of Milton's 
poems are inseparably bound up with his Paritanism. In 
recounting the different traits wherein he competes with the 
greatest names, I passed over what is his transcendent char- 
acteristic, — elevation of tone; a contempt of trifles, a con- 
stant tendency to higher thoughts, never descending to 
baseness, and habitually rising to sublimity. Herein he has 
often been compared to ^schylus, the most ancient of drama- 
tists ; and indeed these two stand out above all others for their 
sustained loftiness, if we set aside the Hebrew prophets. We 
see the quality in Sophocles and in Virgil, but it is there 
mingled with a passion and gentleness rarely employed by 
Milton. Dante, who can soar as high, can also sink and be- 
foul his plumes in depths from which Milton turns with loath- 
ing ; and the same is even truer of Shakespeare. 

But Milton's loftiness of soul comes out most plainly by 
contrast with the frivolity of his contemporaries. His was an 
age of the liveliest thought, — great minds grappling with 
great problems, and equipped with learning that if less critical 
than our own time was far more capacious, — but it was at the 
same time an age of trifles and quibbling, a time of ponder- 
ous pageantry, distorted wit, fantastic ingenuity, far-fetched 
analogy. The stores of ancient and mediaeval writings, and the 
first fruits of dawning science and adventure, were ransacked 
to furnish conceits which stand to real emotion and reflection 
as a Chinese nest of carved ivory balls to a statue by Phidias 
or Angelo. One does not expect much profundity in masques 
got up to amuse a court, or comedies fashioned to catch the 
gods of the Bankside gallery. But when one sees George 
Herbert, whose mind was as full of culture as his soul of piety, 
quibbling and riddling on the very steps of the altar, one feels 
the greater admiration for Milton, whose imagination and die- 



10 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

tion, even amid the gayety of " L'Allegro," stand aloft in their 
sparkling purity, the case of internal fire, like Etna above the 
shores of Catania and Syracuse. 

This loftiness, almost haughtiness, of tone I believe is the 
product, or, rather the very essence, of Puritanism, — that 
Milton's thouglits and words mount higher than even those of 
the choicer spirits of his time because his whole being was in- 
stinct with those same qualities that belonged to Eliot and 
Hampden and Vane in England, and to our own fathers, 
Wilson and Winthrop and Cotton, whom we call Puritans. 

What then were the Puritans? What is this same princi- 
ple of Puritanism, now a scoff, now a terror, to those in whom 
it does not bear sway, — to its possessors a mighty power in 
the strength of which they do all the things which in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews are ascribed to the chosen ones of 
Israel ? 

The name is held to have been attached to those who de- 
sired a purer or simpler worship in the Church of England, 
which they thought had retained too much of the Romish 
observances that the Swiss reformers had thrown off; from 
this division in the Church gradually grew all that makes up 
the Puritan character. But I believe that sentiment itself had 
a far older and deeper origin, — one inherent in the national 
teruper of England, which had broken out many times in the 
centuries preceding Luther. That spirit is the devotion to 
personal liberty ; the defiance of any outside imposed authority, 
— that determination to be free from domination, whether 
of kings or priests, which had come down from the German 
forests. 

History tells us what tlie facts of these assertions of English 
liberty have been. But history does not tell us as well as the 
consciousness of Englishmen, whether of Old or New England, 
what is the English freedom that has never been driven out of 
the hearts of the nation, an eternal encouragement to the 
people, and a warning to all who attempt to enslave them. 
It is a sense of individual right which, as Goldsmith has told 
us, makes every Briton 

Learn to venerate himself as man. 

It has no kindred with the wild frenzy that has seized on 
other nations in mass, claiming liberties they cannot formulate. 



MILTON TERCENTENARY. 11 

It has no desire to defy law, or rebel against rightful sway. 
It has submitted many times to authority which was not right- 
ful, provided that authority restrained its edicts within the 
bounds which the nation prescribed to it. But against all 
transgression of those bounds, against all attempts to control 
men of English blood in those things wherein they had made 
up their minds to be free, native and foreign rulers have alike 
had to learn that ancient lesson, — " Hitherto shalt thou come, 
but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
We should rather reverse the image. It is the alien king in 
vain commanding the tide to obey him that is the type of 
those who have sought to force the English race backward 
from their ancient liberties ; the ebb may apparently give 
ground for years, even for ages ; but the flood is sure to 
return, more irresistible than ever. 

In Tudor times there was a moment's pause of the spirit of 
liberty in England. The nobility, who had commonly been 
its leaders, were cowed and all but exterminated, and the 
peasantry were sharing the low estate of their masters. The 
citizens and merchants were steadily gaining in force, prepared, 
when the time came, to stand up against any attack on their 
native rights ; then the King led the onset against the domin- 
ion of Rome and the whole land burst into flame. It is of 
little moment whether Henry's views were low or lofty, of 
little moment how far the spirit of Reform really pervaded 
England. The main fact, discernible through all disputes, is 
that when Elizabeth died there was a strong, recognized, de- 
termined body that refused to submit to dictation in its worship, 
and .declared that the Church of England must be free, as the 
State of England had been free, — free from any suggestion of 
Roman dominion, as eight centuries before the State had 
declared itself beyond the Roman pale of empire. The body 
which upheld this standard were the Puritans, 

But it must never be forgotten that this claim to national 
and individual liberty was very far from a declaration of inde- 
pendence, or a throwing off of all responsibility. Tlie Puritan 
in his efforts for political freedom held firmly his obedience to 
the law as it was at any time ; and in proclaiming his religious 
freedom from Rome or Lambeth, he owned all the more em- 
phatically his responsibility to God. And this responsibility 
was direct and immediate. Every man, however he resented 



12 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

the exactions and impositions of usurped or strained authority 
in Church and State, could only do so as the personal subject 
of Heaven, unquestioning and unchanging. If at any time a 
Puritan appeared a rebel to King or Bishop, it was because he 
felt under the direct command of his Creator, and settled in 
himself once for all the (question, " Shall we obey God or 
man ? " 

And both these elements — the passion for liberty, becoming 
rebellion against all usurped authority, and the passion of de- 
votion, prostrating itself before the White Throne — are the 
very inspiration of Milton's writing. From his early and deli- 
cate poems, " L'Allegro," " Lycidas," and " Comus," down to 
the last desperate pleadings of the blind Samson, there is the 
same 3'earning for freedom, the same consecration to God. In 
a strain of fierceness that is fairly appalling, he attacks the 
followers of Laud, and defends their Presbyterian opponents; 
he denounces them in turn, declaring " New Presbyter is but 
old Priest writ large," and ends by withdrawing wholly from 
public worship, since no church or sect is free from coercive 
tyranny ; and closes his labors with the august narrative of 
Samson pulling down the idol temple on himself as the only 
way of ending his own slavery and avenging himself on the 
enemies of God. 

Yet in his earliest sonnet he declares his life to be passed 

As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. 

He ends the joyous exultation of the Attendant Spirit when his 
task is done with the ever memorable lines, 

^lortals that would follow me, 
Love virtue, — she alone is free. 

In every one of his bold advances into the very deserts of 
freedom, where the hardiest of his contemporaries shrank 
from following him, he carries with him the standard of re- 
ligion ; he appeals from the lords, who seek to hold him back, 
to his master, God, who leads the way. He is ready to walk 
into the Red Sea if the heavenly pillar only shines before him 
to mark the road. 

The union of these two principles is most strongly shown in 
the whole structure of " Paradise Lost." In the terribly mag- 



MILTON TERCENTENArtY. 13 

nificent opening IMilton seems almost to deify rebellion, — the 
adversary of God, who after his fall " lay vanquished, rolling in 
the fiery gulf," contrives, by his own innate energy, to rise, to 
fly, to walk, to construct a splendid palace, to hold a council, 
to force his way through hell and chaos and regions of whoso 
very existence he knew not; and after one hour of bitter re- 
morse to engage in the work of fresh schemes to win a new 
victory and triumph over the power that crushed him. It 
has seemed to many who have read the poem and scarcely 
understood it, that Milton's sympathies are with Satan, so that 
he awards the victory to the false and not the true hero. It 
is a very superficial idea. It is the Father who is the con- 
queror. If the rebel achieves the triumph of making man his 
brother rebel, it is only to carry in himself the unquenchable 
fire of everlasting punishment. 

Me miserable ! which way shall T fly 
Infinite wrath and infinite despair ? 
Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ; 
And in tlie lowest deep a lower deep 
Still threatening to devour me opens wide 
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.. 

Such is the true meaning of " Paradise Lost." But Milton's 
last word is not spoken there. We read it in that marvellous 
appendix, " Paradise Regained," a poem which, wanting in the 
varied scenery, the gorgeous ornament, the sweeping narrative 
of its predecessor, teaches a yet loftier and deeper lesson, — 
how the soul of man may fortify itself against the arrogant 
assaults of the unwearied enemy, and win the eternal triumph 
of the glorious liberty of the sons of God. That the passion 
for freedom is best satisfied by submission to his authority, — 
that the temptations of the world, the bribes it offers to self- 
assertion, are really badges of slavery, — such is the theme of 
" Paradise Regained," written when, as the world would say, 
Milton's cause, national or personal, was utterly lost. " Para- 
dise Regained" is not a book for every reader, not one for 
those wlio are charmed with " II Penseroso " or "Comus" or 
awed and dazzled by " Paradise Lost." It has a very few cap- 
tivating passages, like the wonderful descriptions of Rome and 
Athens, combining a deep erudition worthy of a contemporary 
of Casaubon and Grotius with a keen appreciation that the 



14 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

Froudes and the Mommsens never attained. But its staple is 
austere. It is not a book to read in easy hours, when we covet 
the harmonies and delicacies of verse ; but in the times of suf- 
ferim% of doubt and dread, when it seems as if even God had 
forsaken us, then there is a tonic power in its view of trium- 
phant sacrifice no other English bard ever portrayed. 

At the time when Milton was telling how Satan offers to 
Jesus the bribe of universal monarchy, liberty had all but 
perished throughout Europe, and monarchy flaunted robes 
everywhere stained with lust and cruelty and frivolity. This 
then is his description of the true king as uttered by the Son 
of God : 

What if with like aversion I reject 

Riches and realms ? Yet not for that a crown, 

Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns, 

Brings dangers, troubles, cares and sleepless nights 

To him who wears the regal diadem, 

When on his shoulders each man's burden lies; 

For therein stands the office of a king, 

His honor, virtue, merit, and chief praise. 

That for the public all this weight he bears; 

Yet he, who reigns within himself, and rules 

Passions, desires and fears, is more a king; 

Which every wise and virtuous man attains*, 

And who attains not, ill aspires to rule 

Cities of men, or headstrong multitudes, 

Subject himself to anarchy within, 

Or lawless passions in him, which he serves. 

But the name Puritan is at this moment used exclusively to 
mean a narrow and cruel inquisitor into one's own life or an- 
other's, cutting out of it all natural and joyous elements, sub- 
stituting a sour tyranny for a genial " live and let live " strain. 
Let those who assert this view read " L'Allegro " if they can. 
To balance this distorted use of the name the word "human" 
has come to mean " vicious," so that when we hear that any 
one, especially any one in a position of authority and con- 
trol, has given way to passion or selfishness or weakness, 
we hear such expressions as "Ah, the judge is human, — he's 
no Puritan." We are told that Puritanism is " passing," that 
being the word which the jargon of the day, which does duty 
for English, uses when it means " passing away." 

The Puritan and his view of life will never pass away. They 



MILTON TERCENTENARY. 15 

were long before Tudors and Stewarts, long even before Chris- 
tianity, — they belong to no one race and no one church. At 
the time that Milton was fighting among those who sought 
to purify the Church of England, Blaise Pascal, a prostrate 
devotee of the Church of Rome, was living the Puritan life in 
Fiance, while exhibiting his country's genius and language in 
its highest perfection under the rule of an asceticism beyond 
Hampden or Vane. 

The Puritan in every country and in every age is bent on 
devoted obedience and service to God. He sees, alike in the 
great world without and the little world, himself, — what the 
thinkers of Milton's day still called the macrocosm and micro- 
cosm, an army of passions, lusts, whims, fancies, ambitions, all 
tending to draw the soul away from God and reduce it to 
slavery, — a slavery exercised by many masters ; some openly 
coercing the soul's native freedom, some cajoling it by the 
names of pleasure and amusement, momentary sport that 
should only rivet yet closer the chains of an artful tyranny. 
Against this treason, alike to God and himself, the Puritan 
feels the call to righteous war. He will not surrender the 
freedom he draws straight from his Father to any enchanter 
with his Circe cup, that substitutes the wantonness of a beast 
for the freedom of men. He is not less but more human than 
his scoffers ; he believes that virtue and purity and self-control 
are the badges of humanity that raise men above beasts, either 
uselessly wild or tamed onl}' by force. 

Were such ideas invented in Elizabeth's reign? Did none 
before the Puritans of England ever condemn thoughtless 
pleasure and selfish indulgence as dangerous at the best and 
ruinous at the worst, reducing man to slavery worse than a 
collared dog or galled horse? Is there a word spoken by all 
the strictest divines of Old or New England that does not seem 
an echo of Plato and Aurelius? No! But with those elder 
men the voice could reach only a few who read and thought; 
they spoke to the votaries of gods whose very worship was an 
outrage against true piety, and their efforts for purity and 
liberty fell on stony soil. The Puritans of Milton's day spoke 
to a mighty nation that had never lost its native conscience 
and its native pride ; they spoke as members of a church 
whose service, if true to its origin, would lead straight to the 
Holy of Holies, but which had long been fettered by devices 



16 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

of men that it had not all thrown off. To reclaim that people 
— their people — that church — their church — from the old 
Egyptian slavery of ease which never aspired and pleasure 
which never reflected, such was the work of the Puritans, — 
of Vane and Cotton, of Winthrop and Milton. 

If anybody doubts that such work was needed, or believes 
that the people of England, when Milton was born, were given 
chiefly to innocent sports and expanded thoughts, that needed 
no repression and no elevation, I would simply send him to 
the theatre of the day ; I would ask him to study the court 
of James the First; I would ask if with any church doctrines 
or any form of government there could be more grossness, 
more frivolity, more sacrifice of the noble to the trivial, what 
is tasteful and delicate to what is coarse and brutal. There 
are things that a truly fastidious taste would omit from Shake- 
speare ; but is there one comedy of Fletcher's that could be 
performed at this day without driving a modest audience with 
blushes from their seats ? 

The Puritans knew other lands besides England ; Milton 
himself had a close acquaintance with the Continent, and 
knew what prevailed where English freedom and English con- 
science had never borne sway. There was one cloud over the 
whole, spread by tyranny and priestcraft, — selling licence to 
play for the surrender of thought. Well might an English 
minister of the gospel or counsellor of state feel that a curb 
was needed on even blameless amusement rather than that 
London should be as Paris or Naples. 

The Puritan view of humanity is set forth once for all by 
Milton in his " Comus." The enchanter comes in attended 
by a rout of men and women with the heads of beasts, who 
break into a revelling dance which his cup and his spells have 
brought them to believe is the mark of uncontrolled freedom, 
but which is really a stage performance at the beck of the 
hardest of masters, the caprice of the hour. It is this rabble 
rout of " Comus," men and women turned into beasts, against 
which the Puritan raised his voice to recall them to true 
humanity. 

Perhaps, if all who held this lofty view had stayed in Eng- 
land to help Milton and Pym and Vane and Cromwell in 
their fight for God and liberty, the victory might have been 
won, not for a few years but for all time. But the Puritans 



MILTON TERCENTENARY. 17 

were divided. America had drawn to her unbroken wilds a 
goodly number of the bravest and noblest; and here, even 
here, their principles took deep root, never to perish, though 
in the sight of the foolish they seem to die. In England the 
reaction came, and the nation plunged into an orgy under 
Charles and James, which in a few years showed that the 
demon who had been driven out had come back to his old 
dwelling with seven others yet worse. A single generation of 
such a life sickened the whole people; slowly and painfully 
the recovery came, while the eighteenth century pursued its 
way in which a sense of morality and purit}^ an elevation 
worthy of Milton, was but a name. What England had come 
to under such influence as apathy in the Church, corruption 
in the State, and drunkenness in society could exercise. Sir 
George Trevelyan tells us in his Life of Fox. In these foul, 
dull times the Puritan spirit awoke, though the name was 
changed. Wesley and Whitefield came to the rescue of the 
masses of the people, whom the selfishness of their masters 
was crushing to the level of the beasts. In another genera- 
tion the Evangelicals, Wilberforce and Hannah More, Henry 
Thornton and Samuel Romilly, passed on the torch of piety 
and self-control, and set in motion the vast machinery of ac- 
tive philanthropy, in protest against a godless life, enslaved 
to self-indulgence. 

But now we are told it is all past. Puritanism is gone forever. 
" Live and let live " is the word of the hour ; every man, every 
woman, every child for itself; and in our reciprocal indul- 
gences we shall find social pleasure. Bohemia is proving that 
Shakespeare's geography is correct, for it is rapidly annexing 
our entire seacoast in its unrestrained vanities, and from its 
subjects the cry goes up, " Comus, I thank thee that I am not 
as the men of old were — considerate, temperate, continent, or 
even as this Puritan." On goes the mad race for pleasure ; 
making fortunes at the expense of honesty to spend them at 
the expense of delicacy, filling theatres and novels with sug- 
gestions of indecency that would have made Fletcher and 
Fielding look away, crushing out the souls of its competitors 
on the journey of life, as its car-wheels crush out the lives of 
its brethren on the roads of the earth. Have a care, great 
Comus ! The bi'others are growing up who shall rush in, 
break your glass against the ground, and drive in your rabble 



18 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

rout, with the triumphant reassertion of the Puritan's creed, 
God's service alone is perfect freedom. 

It is a common charge that Puritans were and are h3'po- 
crites, that they pretended a virtue they did not possess. I do 
not know a better test of sincerity than to consider what men 
sacrifice to their opinions. From opening youth to advanced 
age John Milton had proclaimed in fearless verse and prose 
what he held to be the law of God and man, with a loftiness of 
tone that ignored all frivolity, a beauty of speech that rebuked 
all coarseness, — and what became of his life ? He had started 
with many advantages, — a kindly home, a complete educa- 
tion, a competent fortune, an angelic beauty, a high estimation 
in his own country and abroad, a craving for sympathy. He 
ended his life in blindness, in poverty, in obloquy, in domestic 
sorrow, his poetic powers scarce recognized, his political prin- 
ciples scorned. Yet he was sustained to the end by a serenity 
such as some of his most illustrious associates, like Vane and 
Cromwell, never knew, and a consciousness that he had achieved 
to the full his early ambition to be the author of that which 
" posterity would not willingly let die." Close upon the first 
centennial anniversary of his birth, Addison was teaching his 
countrymen the perfection of Milton's poetry; his praises were 
rung in succession as the years went on by Dryden, Thomson, 
Gray, and Cowper. At the second centennial Wordsworth was 
declaring that the country had need of him at that hour, for 
" his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart " ; and now that the 
third century has passed, in every centre of culture in England 
and America, beginning with his own glorious University of 
Cambridge, where he learned the principles and arts which in 
his hands were to be the chief glory of his time, one universal 
chorus of praise goes up in his honor, who like his contempo- 
rary Galileo saw " worlds and stars unseen by mortal eyes." 

There is always danger, on an occasion of this kind, that 
praise will degenerate into mere panegyric, slurring over or 
leavitng out altogether those parts of a hero's record that cast 
a shadow if not a stain over his glory. Yielding to none in 
my affectionate admiration for Milton's genius, and person, 
there are some points forced upon our notice which demand 
grave censure. 

First, his expressed views about women in his treatises on 
divorce are. entirely unworthy of him; at once unkind and 



MILTON TERCENTENAEY. ^ 19 

unJList, and, what is most striking, quite inconsistent with those 
that he expresses elsewhere. It is difficult to coiiceive that 
the eighth book of " Paradise Lost " with its angelic picture 
of the female character and domestic happiness can have 
come from the same pen as the " Doctrine and Discipline of 
Divorce." 

Again, the virulence of language in some of his controversial 
works is something wholly at variance with the purity and 
elevation of all his poetry and much of his prose. He ransacks 
the stores of Latin as well as English to call his antagonists 
abusive names. It is no excuse to say such was the temper of 
the age, that Milton's opponents were as foul-mouthed as he.^ 
Such is never an adequate excuse for men of genius, of whom 
it is demanded that they shall be above their age; least of all 
with Milton, who, as he scorned women's frivolity, should 
have despised Prynne's scurrility. 

Lastly, for which he never shall have my forgiveness, he 
used to smoke a pipe every evening before going to bed. 

I reminded you that about the age of thirty Milton visited 
the Continent and passed a considerable time in the chief cities 
of Italy. I have often thought that with very little violation 
of history the successive steps of his journey might receive a 
poetical form and be typical of the course of his life. I 
imagine him at each of the Italian capitals to be visited by the 
Genius of the place and urged to surrender himself to its 
special temptation, much as he tells the like story in " Paradise 
Regained." As each proposal draws forth only refusal, the 
indignant guardian pronounces a corresponding curse. 

Beginning with Venice, in the marvellous beauty of his 
manhood, he is beset by the attractions of women, so potent 
in that city in his time ; and upon his indignant refusal the 
sentence is pronounced that he shall be unhappy in love. 

At Genoa the treasures of trade and wealth are laid before 
him in all their splendor ; again he turns away — and is told 
he has nothing to expect in life but poverty. 

At Florence it is art that courts, tiie galleries with their 
glories of painting and sculpture. He views these too un- 

1 I liave seen intimations tliat tliis virulence of abuse was practised only hy 
the Puritans. Tiiose vviio hold this view should read the language of I.aud, 
Bishop of London, to the Rev. Thomas iShepard. — Prince's >."c\v Englua^ 
Chronology, edition of 1826, oliB. 



20 MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

moved, and is threatened with blindness, even like Galileo, 
■whom he has just seen in his confinement. 

The ruins of ancient Rome offer him the promise of political 
glory ; his ambition is obviously awakened, he is yielding a 
half assent, when the thought of how the great Roman leaders 
sold their very conscience makes him break off the compact ; 
and he is answered that he shall win no mean fame as a states- 
man, only to be scorned at last, and scarcely allowed to live by 
his political foemen. 

Modern Rome now calls him to the glories of religion, and 
appeals at once to his earthly and his heavenly aspirations ; 
but he spurns even more passionately the blandishments of 
the Popedom, and is told that he shall live and die an exile 
from every Christian church. 

At last he comes to Naples. The friend of Tasso entertains 
him, and he feels he can read some of the deeper secrets of the 
divine art, — he falls asleep on the cliff that overlooks the 
lovely bay, and there the shade of Virgil, rising from his tomb, 
pronounces that in full recompense for all he has surrendered 
the laurel of the bard shall be his to all eternity. 

The choir then sang choruses from Handel's oratorio of 
'•Samson." The words of this oratorio, produced in London 
in 1743, were compiled by Newburgh Hamilton, mainly from 
" Samson Agonistes," the hymn on the Nativity, and " At a 
Solemn Musick." The next number was a hymn by Milton, his 
paraphrase of Psalm CXXXVI., sung to the tune of " Nurem- 
bei'g," composed by Milton's contemporary, Johann Rudolph 
Ahle. 

The benediction was given by Rev. Charles E. Park ; and 
the organ postlude by Mr. Foote was a fugue in C major by- 
Bach. 



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